


like branches of a tree

by flibbityflob



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom, Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Not Beta Read, and probably utterly incoherent, bisexual akane agenda, i wrote this in an afternoon whilst full of feelings about akane and its just for me, this is something akin to a character study but its just "boy akane likes murder and is very smart"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:14:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26178562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbityflob/pseuds/flibbityflob
Summary: akane, in the years between the game.
Relationships: Kurashiki Akane & Kurashiki Aoi
Kudos: 12





	like branches of a tree

You are born on a particularly cold day at the end of a particularly cold winter. In future years, you will argue with her big brother as to the semantics of whether February is at the end of winter or the beginning of spring, and while he will always argue that it’s spring, your heart tells you it was winter. You end up dying in winter. When your heart and soul and mind are ripped into two fragments, both of them sustained by the desperate want of a child to live, it is in the middle of the warmest winter of your life. Quite literally, a very warm winter. You make that joke to Aoi, and neither of you are quite sure if it’s appropriate for a thirteen year old to make the joke. 

It’s not like the adults in your life have been good influences, really, so neither of you think much of it. It’s funny. Both of you parents are dead, and the pair of you have already been through everything that a child could possibly think up. You’ve already died once. It’s not like there’s much more she can go through. You stared into the soulless eyes of a monster, watched as flames took her life, and survived all the same. Aoi watched you die. Aoi has watched you die, and will watch her die you more. You’re both allowed to be a little fucked up, it’s not like either of you have therapists. 

Once, when you’re fourteen, you imagine what it might be like to visit a therapist. You know you’ve got issues, the pair of you do, it’s hard to not get them from the life you’ve had, but you can’t imagine sitting down in a therapist's office and trying to explain your life. “Hi,” you’d start, “my name is Akane, I’m fourteen years old, I’m an orphan, and when I was twelve I was kidnapped by a monster in order to test my psychic abilities, because did you know, I can share my thoughts with my brother. Oh, and during that extremely fucked up experiment run by a madman, I died. But I also threw my consciousness forward into the future and my best friend saved my life. I can remember both timelines.”

You giggle to yourself at the very thought. The Cradle Pharmaceuticals settlement gave the pair of you enough money to last a lifetime, but probably not enough money to afford the therapist you’d need to not ask questions about all this bullshit. Instead of therapy, you spend almost a hundred dollars on notebooks. Later, you’ll learn the term retail therapy, but for now it’s the beginning of the radical act of planning what is simultaneously revenge and survival. The first journal is full of drawings and diagrams, of the ship and Gentarou and Jumpy and the bracelets, committing every part of the Nonary Game to memory. The second is full of every single fucked up plan you can come up with, to make Gentarou and all his cronies pay for what they did to children. 

Instead of therapy, Aoi rants and rages. For the first six months after the settlement, almost a year and change after the nightmare that was your death, he yells in fury whenever Cradle is mentioned on the news. Later, his anger turns into the start of a panic attack whenever a Cradle press conference happens, whenever the newspaper you have delivered features a cover story with Gentarou on the front. He’s successful, and you’re using his money to pay for your rent, and your heating, and your food. It’s not enough but it’s something. It’s a start. You don't judge him for his panic attacks, not when you saw a sudoku in the newspaper a week ago and had a panic attack so bad you felt as if you were going to die again. Whenever you take out your credit card to buy the tools you need to start planning your revenge, the part of your heart that lives for vengeance thrives. 

You make something akin to a normal life, in the years in-between. Aoi finds the pair of you a good school, he turns seventeen and you fourteen, and you learn to cook whilst he does the cleaning. You do homework, and read, and he buys the pair of you a Playstation and you learn that when his anger isn’t fuelled by the Nonary Game, it’s adorable. He’s the best big brother you could ask for.

You fail three maths tests in as many weeks. Before the game, you struggled with numbers; they’d float around a page and you’d never be able to count properly, but since the Nonary Game you can’t make heads nor tails of them. It’s probably some kind of trauma. But, and you thank him a dozen times for his choice in schools, your sensei notices and instead of condemning you as a lazy, useless student, she calls an educational psychologist and you are diagnosed with dyscalculia. When your diagnosis letter comes in the mail during a cold morning in October, you cry for an hour. The first thirty minutes is spent in relief, that you’re not broken, and the last is spent raging that you died because of this. You bottle it up, and when you pass a maths test for the first time, you’re not sure who’s more happy about it, you or Aoi.

Your nightmares consist of Aoi in your place, being burned alive as you do nothing but watch in horror and disbelief, of Gentarou laughing as he stands in the entryway to the home the pair of you have made. Your best dreams consist of you and Aoi, pressed close to one another, the pair of you bloodied and free as you stand before the dismembered corpse of Gentarou. You tell Aoi about the nightmares, and keep the dreams relegated to a notebook you hide in a hollowed out teddy bear. You’re pretty certain he’d worry about you if you told him you took visceral pleasure in the hyperrealistic fantasies of murdering a man. 

* * *

  
You turn sixteen, and for the first time since Jumpy, you celebrate it with friends. Aoi makes you breakfast, and then three of your friends take you out to go shopping. He kisses your hair, and makes sure everyone knows everyone else’s emergency contacts. You kiss him on the cheek and call him mom for the first time, and he blushes furiously. Only one of your friends speaks Japanese, and even she doesn’t understand it well enough to comprehend the rapid-fire Japanese that’s become the _lingua franca_ for the pair of you at home. Jessica asks you what you said to make him blush so much, and when you explain, she sighs dreamily. Natsuhi rests her head on your shoulder as Jessica and Shannon giddily talk about how handsome your big brother is. You return home that evening, laden with bags and full of the joy of having a real life, and whilst Aoi invites everyone for dinner, only Natsuhi takes him up on the offer. 

“ _Kaa-san_ said she was giving us _natto_ again tonight.” She explains, and the three of you wince in unison. “I wouldn’t mind if it was just the one time this week, but it’s the third time. I can’t complain to her face, but she won’t mind me having dinner at someone else’s house.”

“Of course,” Aoi grins, a tea towel slung over his back, wearing a truly ugly apron with a garish slogan in English. “I went to the Asian supermarket down the road, _gyoza_ and _udon_ for dinner.”

“Natto costs too much in America.” You say, and suddenly the three of you are discussing the merits of food relative to price, and you’ve never felt happier. Aoi seems more relaxed than ever, you haven’t thought about Gentarou in hours, and Natsuhi’s eyes shine like diamonds in the evening light. For the first time in forever, your mind isn’t on the revenge plan you’ve been concocting for three years. 

You and Natsuhi sit in your room and play video games together, discuss movies and books and how much you both miss Japan. It’s quiet, and intimate, and you can feel her breath on your cheek, you’re so close. You’re not sure who starts kissing first, but before you can comprehend it, you’re kissing her. You’ve never kissed anyone before but you want this moment to last for the rest of your life. Natsuhi becomes your girlfriend, and the two of you talk in quiet Japanese during lunches, flirting furiously. For three months you live happily. You ace every test you take; you’re on track to graduate this year and you’ve been accepted to MIT. Aoi starts dating a guy who he met at work, and he seems happier than ever too. The pair of you watch films together every week, and play video games when you get the chance, and you haven’t told him about Natsuhi and you, but you will. 

* * *

  
Three months after you kiss Natsuhi for the first time, you get a newspaper through the door with Gentarou Hongou’s face on it. Cradle Pharmaceuticals is doing better than ever before, and Hongou is one of the most successful men in the country. He’s shaking hands with the president, and is going to visit Japan for talks with the prime minister in a month. 

* * *

  
You break up with Natsuhi. Aoi quits his job and the two of you move across America. You throw yourself into your studies, you pass every class with flying colours and you graduate at twenty one with a Masters in Engineering. You hook up with Charlotte from your Quantum Mechanics class whilst you wait for the government to approve your purchase of the test site in Nevada. You sit between her legs for hours at a time and make her squirm and writhe above you, and she returns the favour in turn, and you think if you were a little kinder, a little warmer, you wouldn’t be fucking her at all because you can feel her falling in love with you. The day the money leaves your bank account, you fuck her senseless and pack all your boxes into the shitty van Aoi bought, and you move to Nevada. You hook up with a different girl in each town you stop in, and the closer you get to the test site, the more you need it rough. You need the reminder you’re alive.

* * *

  
You arrive at the test facility. Aoi lets you curl yourself into the crook of his shoulder as you take in the place. Everything’s still intact from the game of your childhood. You have two years to get everything ready, and you will not rest until it is done. Aoi squeezes your hand, and you prepare your list. Everything has to be ready for the day the second Nonary Game begins.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to ao3 user @airdeari for making me play these games and ruining my life. i love akane more than words and my curse is to suffer.


End file.
